100 Confessions: Hurricanes

(65) I'm a hurricane pro. I grew in Florida. I weathered Andrews, Charlie, Frances, Jeanne, Wilma and all the ones in between. We got three or four a year and usually there was at least one every two years that really hit hard. But you have to remember "hit hard" is a relative term. There's a reason Florida houses are ugly--they're built to withstand hurricanes. We never had any real fear we'd lose our house, but we would worry about stuff falling on our cars and flooding.

For hard-hitters, we boarded up windows, gott water, ice, gas for the generator, etc. Many hit at night so you sat indoors with your family, playing monopoly by candlelight or reading books together. If they hit during the day, we would watch the wind whip around the trees and place bets on whose palm tree would crumble (never was ours).

It was actually a family and community building event. You knew that in the next day(s) you wouldn't have power, so people would empty out their freezers and throw the defrosting food on the grill. Neighbors you'd never talked to in your life suddenly became grill mates and you'd talk about the storm, the damage, etc.

It may sound crazy, but as a kid, I looked forward to them. The sheer force and magnitude of them is amazing. You get time off school. You party with people on block. Your family spends time with you that doesn't involve staring at TV screen and only talking between commercial breaks.